


The ones we meet along the way

by DestielsDestiny



Category: Benjamin January Mysteries - Barbara Hambly
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, F/M, First Meetings, Gen, Homelessness, Hurt/Comfort, Literature, Major Character Injury, Multi, Musicians, OT3, Piano, Pre-OT3, Shakespeare Quotations, Violins
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-01
Updated: 2016-11-30
Packaged: 2018-09-03 11:18:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8710492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DestielsDestiny/pseuds/DestielsDestiny
Summary: A winter storm, a trip to the Opera, and an unexpected act of kindness change the lives of three people forever.





	

**Author's Note:**

> AN: Modern AU, so in this one, Hannibal also quotes song lyrics. Song in first scene is a fragment of Hurricane by Lin-Manuel Miranda.   
> Also, if anyone knows something about weather in New Orleans and spots anything I’m getting wrong, please let me know, as I know next to nothing about the topic.   
> This was partly inspired by Bridgh's yuletide requestions, which included a call for a modern AU in this fandom. However, this is not a formal response to the yuletide challenge.   
> Also, if the voices sound off in anyway, please let me know. I am still new to these characters and trying to find the right tone for each of them.

“Deus!” Hannibal felt the stumble before he saw the pothole, his boots long since worn flat, holes not quite on the right side of making it worth scrounging for something with better tread at the expense of the added warmth still clinging to the old synthetic leather sticking stubbornly to his bony shins. 

His fingers tightened convulsively around the precious bundle of sodden fleece wrapped in his embrace, tremors wracking through his chest in a fit of coughs that was soon lost to the wind. 

Grey gusts of rain and wind sheeted down with a persistence quite uncharacteristic of a southern February, the sky threatening something that he might have ventured to call snow if they were any further north. Dark spittle flecked across the grey mass in his arms, his sodden hair tangling painfully with his chin. He didn’t usually let things get quite this far, some last hint of dignity left where spirits and morphine had long since rinsed away all remaining self-respect. 

His left hand twitched painfully, still tender fingers refusing to curl quite far enough to completely close as more coughs were lost to the rain. 

The alley wall was oddly sweet smelling as Hannibal’s thin shoulder found a sliding purchase on the cold hard concrete, his wrists automatically compensating for the barely controlled fall, shielding the Strad with every last bit of his strength. 

Not that it mattered much anymore, a simple tussle in an alley a month back leaving him with no cash and broken fingers that were showing less and less sign of ever healing properly enough to play his violin again. 

“Life giveth, life taketh away.” His remaining functional fingers reached languidly into the depths of his thin hoodie, the dregs of a whiskey bottle sloshing oddly loudly over the patter and spit of rain rushing through the decidedly unsheltered spot. 

Shrugging the violin shaped bundle closer, Hannibal let his head fall back, allowing rain and whiskey to slough down his throat in equal measure. 

His breath heavy, his eyes wandered back towards the entrance of the alley, patches of grey sky barely visible in the growing darkness. His lips mouthed words between gulps, the barest whisper of a song finding its way out into the gathering night. 

“In the eye of a hurricane, there is quiet. For just a moment, a yellow sky.” 

Hannibal took another sip, reflecting that perhaps there were worse ways to go. 

\--

The flautist was slightly flat. 

Benjamin graciously suppressed his third wince of the evening, the happy glow gracing Rose’s face a rare enough commodity over the past year for him to gladly sit through the somewhat painful orchestral attempts of the Opera they were attempting to enjoy. 

Ben’s fingers caressed the satiny box in his pocket, toying with the lid, not quite snapping it enough to snap back with each slightly off note of the wind solo that had so far seemed to last for an eternity. 

Rose’s pink ruffles made the slightest rustle, her elegant white gloves reaching out blindly on each side. Ben ripped his hand away from his pocket, grasping the searching fingers as he gazed at Rose’s smile, his heart turning to ice when her other hand met empty air, the rapture graining away as if had never been. 

Ben was far too used to that expression by now, and far too sick of the sheer uselessness that fell over him like a pall every time he saw it. 

Ayasha had been Ben’s partner long before Rose ever entered the equation. She wasn’t supposed to be the uncertain element of their triad. Wasn’t supposed to be the one who broke both their hearts. 

There are days when Ben still rolls over in bed, hands reaching out, expecting to find her there, laughing at Rose’s gentle snores. 

Gloved fingers squeeze his as a warbling oboe joins the hapless flautist, new tortures entering their ears. The box sits like lead in his pocket, the last quiet snap echoing in his ears with all the likeness of a far off piano string finally reaching its limit. 

Rose looks beautiful tonight, her dress perfectly cut, the colour complementing her dark skin beautifully, the style just old enough to appeal to her love of all things historical and elegant. 

Ayasha made it for their first anniversary. Ben had always loved that dress. 

Rose’s curls brushed Ben’s chin, her head finding his broad, tuxedo clad shoulder. 

“I miss her Ben.” The whisper was snatched up in the far off howl of the wind gathering outside the theatre, the woodwinds mercifully retiring to the full throated voice of the rather excellent soprano. 

It had been exactly a year today. Ben clenched his jaw tighter, his eyes remaining stubbornly fixed, stubbornly dry. He tightened his arm around Rose, presses a kiss into her curls. 

“I know. I miss her too.” He carefully doesn’t think about the box burning in his pocket. Doesn’t think about the ring inside, or how much it feels like a betrayal of the woman who promised to be with him, with them, forever. 

The woman who left them, and took their hears with her.   
\--

The fist felt different, felt slightly more somehow. Not the plowing force of Bronze Knuckles Hannibal decided, his head snapping back to glance off the alley wall, nor the sharp sting of broken glass tied to crude plastic. 

Hannibal has never quite considered himself a street inhabitant, his intermittent busking almost enough to tip the number of nights he spends in run down inns and shady shelters into the positive in balance with the nights he spends in the typical milieu of parks and bridges. 

His chin snapped across the other way. Gloves he decided, the hard leather biker kind, surfaces designed to prevent skin from flaying on concrete making short work of Hannibal’s brittle cheekbone. 

So far, this wasn’t the worse beating he had received, even in the past year. The looming number of extra figures approaching through the storm looked to change that however. 

Hannibal was, partly from long experience and partly from his more than a little inebriated state, more than happy to go with the flow, or the blows, as the case may be. 

Then new thug two kicked out as Hannibal’s chest, boot connecting with bone and something softer with a distinctive crunch. 

Hannibal felt his face drain of colour, as the sound of breaking wood, smashed strings, crying instrument filled his ears. There wasn’t much Hannibal had left to care about in the world. 

Somehow, losing this last little thing seemed unthinkable, useless broken fingers or not. 

“Man hath no greater love.” Thug one and thug three looked confused, thug two paused in mid kick. Hannibal smiled, white teeth framed in blood. 

“Don’t stop on my account chaps.” 

There were worse ways to go. 

\--

Ben pulled the collar of his jacket up against the latest gust of the hurricane that had kicked up from annoyance to worrying problem in the past few hours. Rose huddled close to his bulk. Ben somehow found it in himself to chuckle, the sound lost in the torrential rain washing over them both. It wasn’t a mistake that they lived scant minutes on foot from the largest theatre house in New Orleans, but their umbrellas were blown out on the first moments out of the theatre doors, laughter momentarily stealing the melancholy grief occupying the silences between their not quite touching bodies. 

Rose let herself react enough to glare playfully at Ben for his teasing chuckle, but her deliberate lack of care in even attempting to keep the once treasured ruffles from complete ruination in the unexpected weather that had kicked up while their ears were being assaulted for the past few hours prevented any real humour sparking up between them. 

Ben was moments from offering her his jacket, hating himself more than a little for his own inability to stop caring about those damn ruffles when the sounds first reach his keen musician’s ear. 

\--

Those ruffles saved Hannibal’s life. The man points that out to Ben many times in the years that follow. He rejects Rose’s suggestions of the weather, the performance, their ruined umbrellas, or even Ben’s damn chivalry as viable candidates for this distinction. He always says, no dear Athene, it was the ruffles, I am positive of this.   
Hannibal never meets Ayasha, something Ben concedes is probably a good thing the fifth time he watches Hannibal hold Rose as she cries over old photographs. 

But he never budges on how the ruffles Ayasha made saved his life. Ben likes that idea too much to ever disagree. 

\--

Hannibal’s eyes are close to completely swollen shut when the bat appears, striding into the maze of shadows and colours blurring into prisms before his swollen eyelids. 

Thugs one, two, and three turned out to have a friend in thug four, and Hannibal likes to think the outcome might have been different if this had not been the case. 

As it is, he is collapsed on the alley floor by the time the mysterious figure joins them, slamming into thug 3 and thug 4 like a shadowy bulldozer. A smaller shadow darts towards thug 2, who is attempting to reach for his knife, and apparently, Hannibal was even less of a challenge than he thought, and was that a ruffle??

Thug one starts running around the time thug 3 hits the ground groaning, slamming down inches from Hannibal’s searching hand. His good fingers have now officially become his worse fingers, pain a new level of indescribable, the feel of bones grinding together a far too familiar feeling. 

They find the lump of fleece and wood anyway, shards of string and whorls of wood all that is left of the last thing he had to care about. 

The sobs rock his body in sudden, painful quakes, the chill of the rain mixing with the heat of his blood gushing out onto the alley floor. The bat has surprisingly gentle hands, something brushing against the sodden mass of tangles plastered to his forehead. 

Smaller fingers find the edges of his own, carefully gathering up the scraps of his life from the sodden drecks of the alley floor. 

Hannibal finds something in him for one last whisper, blood flying from strangely dry lips. “The quality of mercy is not strain'd, It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven. Upon the place beneath.” 

The hands on his back are joined by a throaty chuckle, and Hannibal feels himself begin to slide away at last. 

His last thought is, rather inauspiciously, mild pleasure that at least someone out there still knows some Shakespeare.


End file.
